These dog days of August make frozen custard more inviting than a pie with a custard filling, but I couldn’t resist the call from Yinzerella of Dinner is Served 1972 for competitors in the 5th annual Pieathlon. I participated once before by making a recipe for Cottage Cheese Apple Pie, which is not as vile as it sounds. This year, Yinzerella collected recipes published before 1990 from food bloggers, and assigned each of us a pie to make and share.

This year’s challenge, Old English Egg Nog Pie came from Retro Food for Modern Times, a fun blog that bills itself as “yesterdays recipes, cooked today.” Originally published in Entertaining with Good Housekeeping (date unknown), the recipe seems fit for a holiday feast. It took three steps to make – crust, custard, and the final addition of whipped cream and egg whites. Luckily, given the sweltering temperatures in Boston this month, only the crust required baking. I modified the original recipe by using melted chocolate to decorate, as my attempt at chocolate shavings ended up looking like dust. I also didn’t have a springform pan, so I used a tart pan instead. The directions worked quite well, but next time I’d add more nutmeg or a teaspoon of vanilla or almond extract to the filling – it was somewhat bland despite the rum and the chocolate topping. Still I was happy to fuel my training for a real triathlon in September!

Share this:

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

About heritagerecipebox

I am named after my great-grandmother, who only prepared two dishes, according to anyone who remembers. Somehow I ended up with a cooking gene that I brought with me from Richmond, Virginia to my current home in Boston, Massachusetts. I have worked as a journalist and published three cookbooks plus a memoir and a novel. This blog gives me a chance to share family recipes and other American recipes with a past.

One teaspoon of nutmeg and no other spices? No wonder it was so bland. But it looks lovely. I love your blunt honesty when you say your chocolate shavings turned to dust. Though sometimes a light dusting of chocolate can look charming anyway! 😀

Thanks for visiting! The challenge of recreating older recipes is whether to alter them too much. If I really need to make chocolate curls, I need a lesson and the right tools, not a chocolate bar and a carrot peeler!